China votes to allow President Xi Jinping to rule for life

Beijing: President Xi Jinping of China is poised to rule the country indefinitely after Chinese lawmakers passed changes to the country’s constitution abolishing presidential term limits.

The amendment was sure to pass the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, which voted 2,958 in favor, two opposed and three abstaining.

Since Xi assumed leadership of China’s Communist Party in 2012, he has rapidly consolidated power to levels not seen since the era of Mao Zedong. The constitutional change officially allows him to remain in office after the end of his second term in 2023.

The National People’s Congress approved two additional constitutional amendments, including “the addition of a political philosophy called Xi Jinping Thought to the constitution, and the creation of politically driven ‘supervisory commissions’ tasked with investigating party members and civil servants.

Xi signaled his strength last year when he had his theories added to the Communist Party charter and he bucked the trend to designate a successor at the end of his first term.

China’s leaders “claim that they’re making the move in response to popular demand, but they haven’t released the results of any survey.